Friday, 3 April 2015

What is the need to introduce a fresh set of high-stake assessments- tests that are difficult, and time-consuming?
As the testing season progresses, parents and teachers are continuously raising these questions, and desire to understand the need to introduce new standards that necessitate a novel style of instruction and learning.
In this article, we answer these questions, and explain why the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and standards-based assessments score over the present-day "teaching for the test" environment.The Common Core State Standards
In 2009, a teacher’s consortium, with states-wide representation released an innovative set of academic standards. These standards act as an achievement guide for school districts, school management and teachers.
Instead of telling teachers what students should be taught, Common Core defines what students should learn in their respective grade.
In brief, CCSS defines the learning-expectations for grade 1 to 12 in Math and English.
The new standards attempt to enhance the quality of K12 education, and provide our high-school graduates with skills essential for career and college.
This aims at addressing the skill-gap haunting the dismal job-market and providing students with skills needed for the new-age work-environment.
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Key advances in CCSS Math

The new standards pay more attention on clarity, coherence and focus on concepts.
For each grade, CCSS defines a certain number of important topics. And suggests a model that ensures coherent progress of each student.

Common Core Standards pay attention on enhancing procedural fluency, and basic understanding of concepts and skills.

They pay more attention on increasing rigor in grade level mathematics, so that students develop procedural fluency based on reasoning and understanding of concepts across the grades.

Teach mathematics at high school as per conceptual categories.

Key advances in CCSS English

Most important of shifts in CCSS English is emphasizing compulsory attention on real-life texts and informational-texts.

They pay greater attention on preparing students for higher text complexity;

More emphasis on argument, informative/explanatory writing and research;

Speaking and listening skills;

It clarifies literary standards for history, science, and technical subjects.

Standardized Testing

The PARCC Assessments

Schools administering PARCC assessments will have five assessments on their table.
These assessments will have either a summative or a non-summative component or both. Administrable at different intervals, these assessments will provide the schools, teachers and parents with data to improve student performance.
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Purpose of PARCC Assessments

Inform whether students are on-track for success;

Assess students for the full range of Common Core Standards;

Provide student performance data during the academic year;

Provide useable data to inform instruction, interventions and professional development;

Provide data for accountability.

Components of PARCC Assessments

1. Summative Assessment Components

It evaluates student learning of an instructional unit by comparing their performance against some standard or benchmark.
These are often high-stake, which means that they have a high point value.
Information from summative assessments is formative; and help teachers and students to guide their efforts and activities in subsequent courses.

2. Non-Summative Assessment Components

It is a collection of standards-based, non-summative assessment practices.
These assessments provide a model of how to build standard mastery through the school year. They also provide opportunities for students to have opportunities to experience more challenging tasks by the end of the school year.
PARCC assessments provide deep evidence that teachers can analyze whether students are on-track at applying CCSS expectations.

Mid-year assessments comprise of performance-based items and tasks, with an emphasis on hard-to-measure standards.
After study, individual states may consider including as a summative component.
They too are non-summative and optional assessments.

Performance-based assessments (PBA) are compulsory assessments, administered close to the end of the school year as possible.
ELA/literacy PBA will focus on writing effectively when analyzing text; while mathematics PBA focuses on applying skills, concepts, and understandings to solve multi-step problems requiring abstract reasoning, precision, perseverance, and strategic use of tools.

End-of-Year assessments (EOY) are summative and compulsory assessments, and administered after approx. 90% of the school year.
The ELA/literacy EOY focuses on reading comprehension; and math EOY comprises of innovative, machine-scorable items.

Speaking and listening assessments are optional assessments.
They will measures how well students absorb information by listening, and how skillfully they communicate that knowledge orally.
Teachers will score students based on student-produced content based on what they present or what they hear.

Shifts in Math and ELA/L)expectations

Major shift in ELA/L expectations

Read sufficiently complex texts independently;

Write effectively to source;

Build and present knowledge through research.

Major shift in Math expectations

Solve problems: content and mathematical practice;

Reason mathematically;

Model real-world problems;

Have fluency with mathematics.

Goals of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC)

Create high-quality assessments

PARCC assessment measures students' fluency, conceptual understanding and application of concepts.
Students need to display their skills critical-thinking skills and problem-solving skills.
PARCC uses summative and non-summative components of testing to provide teachers and students with precise state of student learning and help teachers identify student-strengths and weaknesses.

Build a well guided pathway for high-school students to succeed with college

PARCC ensures that teachers have precise information all throughout the Grade school to enable them to provide proper intervention and ensure effective student support.
Regular testing generates reliable student-achievement data, and ensures that students are on their way to career and college readiness.
In high-school students take tests that generate a college-readiness score to identify students who are ready to handle college-level coursework and those who need intensive instruction.
PARCC reports allow teachers to provide targeted intervention and timely intervention.
Furthermore, teachers get the opportunity to administer bridge-courses to ensure that students have a smoother and successful first year in college.

Support educators in the classroom

The advantages of a PARCC assessment are many folds.
They report student’s strengths and weaknesses; help teachers understand the effects of current pedagogy, and adopt changes to improve student performance.

Develop 21st century technology-based assessment

PARCC is a computer-based assessment. A compulsory test leverages the effective use of technology in classrooms.
Furthermore, the accommodations provided by PARCC and SBAC ensure that even the students of SWD and ELL group get an equal opportunity to progress at the same rate.

Increase accountability at all levels

PARCC also attempts to improve accountability at all levels. The reliable and timely data generated by the assessments:

Ensure that schools and districts maintain effectiveness;

Highlight educator effectiveness;

Help map student performance in placement tests.

Allow comparison with other state level and international benchmarks.

PARCC ELA/literacy assessments:

The most important quality that any assessment should have is that they should not distract the class from the learning process and should become natural inheritance to classroom instruction. PARCC designs are evidently easy and exciting.
[Tweet "PARCC provides an opportunity to students of experiencing challenging, real-life tasks by the end of the school year."]

What to expect with PARCC assessments?

More complex texts: Students need to prepare for more real-life problems, and should be comfortable with the embedded academic language.
Students will have to develop skills for close and careful reading; moreover, the skill of identifying words that pervade the provided text.

Evidence based tasks: Student will have to prepare to answer questions based on evidence, derived from the provided text; be ready to cite evidence rigorously; and generate more evidence-based responses.

[Tweet "For success, students will have to develop skills of accuracy and precision."]

Build Knowledge through provided-text: Student must learn to build knowledge base based on the provided text.
Questions test students for their critical and problem-solving skills, so students must develop their skill of comparing texts, and synthesizing ideas.

PARCC Math assessments:

More focus on core-standards: For success, students need to master the subject to meet a pre-defined standard.
As the standards define what a student should know by a specific grade.
Students who expand their math base to achieve mastery of standard of their particular standard have higher chances of success.

Coherence: students need to focus on their skills of being able to connect two or more concepts to solve a problem.
They may have to connect more than one concept and create solutions

Rigor: Just like ELA/Literacy standards, students will have to pay attention on mastery of standards.
They must develop skills of fluency and conceptual understanding; learn procedural skills and concept-application; and be ready to solve questions based on real-world problems.

Benefits of PARCC Assessments:

PARCC will help build a pathway to College and Career Readiness for all students;

It will improve student’s engagement in assessments with innovative tasks and giving access to accommodations;

Increased access to and provision of accommodations for SWDs and ELLs;

Efficient scoring by combining human and automated approaches;

Valid, reliable and timely reports through-out the year to inform instruction, intervention and professional development.

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) makes testing of student a compulsory task for our school districts.
Unfortunately, the present-day testing, famously known as the bubble tests call for no skill other than memorization and its application.
Testing has become an annual exercise of collecting test scores; of labeling students as a success or failure. In contrast, PARCC assesses students with innovative test items, better accommodations, reliable scoring and timely feedback.
This provides our education system an opportunity to look beyond collection of accountability data and pay attention on student development.

Monday, 3 March 2014

Schools use PracTutor for all three tiers of Response to Intervention (RTI) framework.
PracTutor identifies students at-risk in the initial phase itself and accelerates their learning with instruction and practice that is intensive, balanced, and personalized.Tier 1 - Core Instructional Interventions
All students in the Tier 1 phase receive high quality and scientifically segregated set of instruction. They are differentiated to meet their needs and are screened on a periodic basis to identify struggling learners who need additional support.
PracTutor takes a pre-test for each of the common core domains to ensure that each student has a unique learning path based on his/her skill set. The students then choose and learn from the educational and entertaining videos. Each video corresponds to one of the learning styles as per VARK (Video, Audio, Reading, and Kinesthetic). Students learn, practice, and take tests for each standard to ensure continuous progress. A student can take up the same lesson again and again with various resources until he receives desired grades. The score and progress records help identify the struggling students.
When teachers monitor students’ progress and get immediate alerts related to the struggling students, they provide instant remediation and help them on the individual basis.Tier 2 - Targeted Group Interventions
In Tier 2 phase, the students identified as not “making adequate progress in the core curriculum” are provided with progressive intensive instruction that match their needs. As stated earlier these needs are identified based on the individual levels of performance and progress.
PracTutor ensures that the students who are identified as the struggling students in the core curriculum receive sufficient instructions. These instructions are in the form of videos, a step-by-step guide, along with explanations for each concept to ensure they grasp and relate to the basics thoroughly before they proceed ahead.
Teachers can group the students as per their skills and can assign the core standards to individual groups or to the whole class as per the needs of attention and intervention. The detailed reports help the school administrators and teachers to stay on the top of their assignments and progress.Tier 3 – Intensive And Individual Interventions
In phase 3, students receive individualized, intensive interventions that target the students' skill deficits for the remediation of the existing problems. This level assists in prevention of more severe and deep-rooted issues.
PracTutor links each common core standards to the previous pre-requisite standard; this helps introduce intensive intervention by inserting the missing skills in the student’s personalized learning path. The student can learn the missing skills through the set of videos and practice (with hints and step-by-step explanations) to ensure the existing problems are resolved before proceeding to the next standard.NCTM recommends a set of in the process of creating intervention program and PracTutor is the only program that satisfies all the criteria.PracTutor For Enrichment
PracTutor is equally well suited for talented, proficient, dedicated, or gifted students as it is for the students that lag behind.
PracTutor takes a pre-test for each of the common core domains to ensure that each student has a unique learning path based on his/her skill set. The advanced students start with challenging core standards and are not required to complete the standards that they are already familiar with. This engages them more and helps them stay motivated.
Each core standard in PracTutor has a critical thinking practice and tests to challenge the advanced level students. These tests are application-based and concept building questions that are aligned with the PARCC and the Smarter Balanced Assessments.PracTutor For Career And College Readiness
With the growing complexity of the world and the increasing demands of the 21st-century workforce, there is little doubt that all students must graduate from high school fully prepared for college AND careers.
PracTutor’s differentiated instructions through videos practice and tests relevant to real world problems help ensure the students are prepared for healthy career options and competitive college.About PracTutor
PracTutor is a customized learning and practice environment to help students in Grades 1 to 8 master Math and English. We provide 1-to-1 mentoring for each student. We make the learning fun by introducing gamification and help parents and teachers track progress and get alerts whenever they need help.
For More Visit http://www.practutor.com